'Saw' Scribes Adapting 'Scary Stories' Into Film

By ZACH SEEMAYER

December 04, 2013

CBS Films has decided to pick up a pitch by Saw series scribes Patrick Melton and Marcus Dunstan, which would adapt the book series Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, according to Deadline. The three-part book series is a collection of horror stories for children, which famously was thought to have some of the most terrifying fiction and cover art in the history of kid lit.

The books were written by author Alvin Schwartz, with nightmarish drawings by Stephen Gammell, and were composed of urban legends and folklore, retold by Schwartz. The Scary Stories series was published by Scholastic, the publishing house known for publishing education books and fiction for children and young adults, and it was because of this that the books were popular, and often controversial, when read in schools.

Melton and Dunstan will write the feature-script, incorporating many of the book series' short stories, with the narrative frame focusing on a number of school children who are trying to stop real-life nightmares from destroying their town.

The first book in the series was published in 1981, while the sequel More Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark came out in 1984 and Scary Stories 3: More Tales to Chill Your Bones was released in 1991.

Dunstan and Melton are big names in horror currently. Together they wrote the fourth through seventh Saw films, the low-budget creature feature Feast, as well as its sequel, the serial-killer films The Collector and The Collection and Piranha 3DD.
No word yet on when production is set to begin.